A tie at the olympics??

I was wondering if anyone had any info about the history of ties in the olympics? I know that at SLC there were two gold medal pairs teams, but those were special cicumstances... I'm asking because I had a dream that michelle and sasha tied and both won the gold meda.... silly huh?

Originally posted by Lynn226 Good question. I don't know the answer for sure, but under 6.0 there are tie-breaking procedures. However, if 2 skaters are tied under CoP, then what is the tie-breaking procedure, if any?

Here's how they do tie breakers.

Ties within a segment
If two or more skaers will have the same result, the Total Element Score will break the tie in the Short Program and the combined score of all 5 Program Components will break the tie in Free Skating. If these results are also equal, the competitors concerned will be considered as tied.

The closest thing to a tie that I can recall was for the Ice Dancing Gold Medal at the 1980 Olympics. The Soviet team of Linichuk/Karponosov and the Hungarian team of Regoczy/Sallay both received five first place ordinals, with the British judge giving both couples a first place ordinal. She refused to break the tie, so the Gold medal came down to an ordinal count. The Soviet judge had given the Hungarian couple one third place ordinal, so they were ranked second with the Soviets taking Gold.

I seem to recall ties at other events, but that was years & years ago and they were in events that were less subjective. In those cases, 2 gold medals were awarded & 1 bronze - no silver. The thought was that the bronze winner didn't really finish 2nd; so no bump up.

I don't get why they don't have ties in skating? They have ties frequently in gymnastics in the Olympics. What's one more $180 medal? With COP, it seems so convoluted to break a tie. If the skaters have the same score, give 'em both gold medals. There's no law forbidding ties from occurring in the Olympics. In gymnastics, two different and great programs can receive the same score. Why nitpick and say that the spiral score will be the tiebreaker or that the jumps will outweigh the elements?

I know there have been some ties in swimming at the Olympics. In fact 2 Americans tied for 1st in one of the short distance races in Sydney. Gary Hall Jr and ???? I don't remember hearing about the other one very much.

I love ties! That was a great event and I loved the replays of both of them slapping the wall at the same time.

Originally posted by soogar I don't get why they don't have ties in skating? They have ties frequently in gymnastics in the Olympics. What's one more $180 medal? With COP, it seems so convoluted to break a tie. If the skaters have the same score, give 'em both gold medals. There's no law forbidding ties from occurring in the Olympics. In gymnastics, two different and great programs can receive the same score. Why nitpick and say that the spiral score will be the tiebreaker or that the jumps will outweigh the elements?

I don't see how the tie breaking process in CoP is so "convoluted". It's actually much more involved in the Ordinal and OBO systems. Other than that though, tiebreaking rules are practically the same. Technical breaks tie in SP, Component marks in LP. If there's a tie overall, the Free Skate place breaks the tie. It's practically the same process as now!

I don't understand why they can't tie skaters. You can have two great programs that are equally good. You can argue that MK and TL could have been tied in 1998 . If skaters tie under code of points, why bother breaking the tie? Just let them both get the gold esp since the result is quanititative verses based on placement. Gymnastics is a judged sport and ties happen all the time in the Olympics. Why not give two great programs/skaters their just recognition?

Wasn't there once a three way tie for gold in gymnastics? It was in one of the event finals. It might have been at worlds or the olympics (not sure).

There actually can still be ties still in the system (ordinal, OBO, and CoP), but I don't particularly see why there should be ties though. The whole point is to give your opinion on who is the best that night. Saying that the skater is simplyi "tied" may often times lead to lazy judges who simply tie skaters to save he/she time and they won't have to worry about boxing themselves in.

I also fear the precendent it may cause as I don't want to see the possibility of more than 1 Gold medallist happening very often. The possibilities of ties could reach upward as more than 3 skaters tied.

Also, your analogy of MK and Tara at 98 doesn't take into account the SP. MK would have won in your example.

If you take into account the standard deviation, there will be CoP decisions where the difference between skaters is statistically insignificant and could have gone either way, and in many cases, this will be appropriate. So while the ISU isn't going to give out additional medals or announce ties based on this, it will take about 15 seconds for someone to run the program they've written to figure out which judges' scores counted for each program (assuming anonymity and random selection are retained) and to do the standard deviation calculations.

Which is not to say that the scores will reflect the written standards, because, like with PE scores this year, the entire panel could be in synch but smoking something strong.